It's God vs. Satan in a modern retelling of "Paradise Lost."
At least, that's the MoJoe take on what's really going on with "Lost" after watching season six's stunning, what-the-what season premiere.
That, and wow: "Lost" is back and as awesome, confusing, exhilarating and beautiful as ever.
Beyond those two quick points, however, we're not going to offer any further original interpretation of Tuesday's two-hour event. Because, quite frankly, we're just not qualified to professionally dissect "Lost."
Thankfully, plenty of other media friends are quite adept at illuminating the intricacies of the "Lost" universe. And they blog about it immediately afterward, giving the rest of us a chance to better comprehend what the Darlton we just saw.
Each week here on MoJoe, we'll be recapping the recaps, pointing out some of our favorite summations and observations culled from the many Internet postings about ABC's baffling but brilliant Tuesday hit.
We're starting out with just a few bloggers. But we'll be expanding (as soon as later today) to include more analysts -- and welcome suggestions on other "Lost" experts we ought to be checking out.
Entertainment Weekly/Doc Jensen
The world's foremost "Lost" mind hadn't posted his full opus of a recap as of early Wednesday morning. But he and cohort Dan Snierson did get a chance to talk to Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse about this year's storytelling hook:
EW: The whole idea of flash-sideways and the plan to use season 6 to show us a world where Oceanic 815 never crashed — how long has that been in the works? Why did you want to do it?
DAMON LINDELOF: It’s been in play for at least a couple of years. We knew that the ending of the time-travel season was going to be an attempt to reboot. And as a result, we [knew] the audience was going to come out of the “do-over moment” thinking we were either going start over or just say it didn’t work and continue on. [We thought] wouldn’t it be great if we did both? That was the origin of the story.
UPDATE: The Doc's full recap is up. Click here to read it.
Mo is detailed but never wonky in her recaps. She sums up what MoJoe thinks is the key to the whole show:
There has been a lot of religious symbolism on this show, and here we had a character appear to die (as he was being baptized) and be reborn. We had the yin and yang or Jacob and SmokeLocke and their eternal battle. We got to see what people do when they are (unwittingly) given a do-over in life -- will they keep making the same mistakes? Will they end up in the same places or do they really have choices?
What's Alan Watching/Alan Sepinwall
Our buddy Alan, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture, doesn't disappoint with his dead-on linking of this season's story hook to a certain movie:
Having taken us both back and forwards through time, turns out the game for year six involves going sideways, with a "Sliding Doors"(*) approach that allows Cuselof to have it both ways with last year's cliffhanger, as we see one timeline where Faraday's plan worked and Jack and company wound up back on the plane in 2004, and another where it didn't and everyone's in the middle of a big mess on Craphole Island in 2007.
